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It's not just the BBC though, even your initial example of trolling isn't what was originally called trolling!

A troll was someone who manipulated emotional responses out of people on forums by faking their position so well as to drive their opponents crazy. There was an art-form to it as they tried to not get discovered while being more and more ludicrous to the point that it was obvious.

What you mentioned is what I would either call pranking or just lying - but it is now the common definition of trolling.

What BBC and Daily Mail etc are talking about is just people who are assholes.

But to explain it anyway, the idea of trolling is/was to go for a single gullible noob/fish and then winding him/her/it in/up. I guess for mass trolling, where you go for a larger group, the term trawling would be better. Trawlface, anyone?

But a different type of reaction, in the past the aim of trolling was frustration and bewilderment of the target, now it seems to be instilling fear in the target, or stifling them in some way? I'm not really sure what the current aim is, I don't understand the mentality of someone posting death threats over the internet but I can at least have a slight insight in to the motivations of old style trolls.

I think as I post more of on it, it really comes down to two thing: firstly, "classical" trolls didn't want to be discovered immediately. The entire joke was that they could derail a thread for a few hundred posts. Secondly, "classical" trolls didn't want to emotionally hurt their target, they wanted to frustrate and anger them.

"Modern" trolls specifically want to be known straight away (so instead of a controversial opinion, they go straight for death threats) and want to hurt/intimidate their targets.

Everything moves toward the low-hanging fruit. Once upon a time the Bel-Air was artfully worked into the most unusual of places, and considered a much more accomplished feat if the target remained completely unaware that they were being Bel-Aired, like this epic example.

Clever and interesting instances slowly faded away to be replaced with copypasta-ing the lyrics verbatim, at which point I realised I'm gonna need about tree fiddy because I'm a 500 foot tall deeply unoriginal troll from the 4chan era.

One of the biggest problems I have with what "trolling" has become is that perhaps the most important aspect of it - that is to say, keeping your true intentions hidden from your targets - is largely ignored by self-proclaimed "trolls", which destroys what little respect "trolling" could still command at this point in time.

People are so quick to celebrate their perceived victory that they don't realise the act of doing so negates said victory entirely. The moment people see through your façade, you've failed.

The meaning of words and their usage will inevitably change over time, but I wish a different word could have been used for shit like this. Effective trolling really was a art, and 12-year-old shouting about how they trolled their friends and people leaving negative comments on YouTube videos are not, and should never have been called "trolls".

Not so much a moron, more like an intelligent person who infuriatingly won't listen to reason. That was the key of trolling originally, not being someone easily dismissed, but someone you think is engaging you in a debate you have a chance of winning. They specifically weren't acting retarded (until close to the end of a thread).

Now it's just people who post the unpopular opinion with bad grammar and random caps. That's not what I called trolling, it's being a wanker.

they still are trolling though. they're saying and doing things so get an emotional response. they wouldnt ACTUALLY rape those women, or kill them, therefore they're faking their position so well it drives others crazy. they're just doing it in the most extreme way

OK but this is like comparing Justin Bieber to Mozart and saying they both relate to music! Yes on a technical level they are doing the same thing (getting emotional responses) but trolling was originally a game of exasperation not insults & threats - the troll argued just on the edge of sanity so their target couldn't be sure if they were a troll or a genuine believer (actually ended up created an internet law, Poe's law).

Trolls very rarely used to go for personal insults and never went in for threats and doxing, it was more about driving the target crazy through complete lack of logic and talking points.

I wouldn't compare some of the trolls on Fark.com from 10 years ago to the idiots on twitter today. Totally different.

My complaint then is that we already have words to describe all that behaviour. Classical trolling was defined by the fact that your target would find it impossible to figure out if you are for real or not and involved nuance and intelligence - modern "trolling" is about shock value and can be done by the dumbest person you know.

Yeah, trolling is about being duplicitous, whilst internet bullies are straightforward, well; bullies. There's no hiding what they're doing as they're just plain insulting and being horrible to people.

Say this is /r/Music, and I leave a comment here saying Justin Bieber is a musical prodigy. I don't particularly think so; I just think leaving a comment saying that will make you angry. You reply in caps lock with vitriolic insults and insult half of my ancestry. I grin as I read your post, triumphant in the knowledge that I just wasted your time and emotional energy on an opinion I care utterly nothing for.

In this situation, I would be the troll and you would be the flamer. Two different things.

I was a truly spectacular livejournal troll (of this, true, form) in 2006~. I pretended to be an insane yet lovable girl engaged to her old and wacky science teacher, getting up to such escapades as almost choking to death on cotton wool and cutting a hole in the floor of a flat to create a sunken bed ala John Lennon in the film Help! on a whim. It was a question/answer board and I divided them in fury and adoration. I even had my own encyclopaedia dramatic page.

Exactly correct. Which is why people would say, "Please don't feed the trolls." Meaning, don't give the trolls a reaction.

The phrase most commonly used phrase to describe this in the UK is to 'wind up', to make fun of someone until they react. For example; poking someone until they show annoyance, changing the TV over to avoid the shows your friend wants to watch, or to run away after knocking someone's door.

I like to go on /r/sex and start posts about my girlfriend having a 'deep minge'. I very much enjoy the ensuing argument, but no harm is intended and I always reveal my trolliness. Have never bullied anyone or made anybody feel bad about themselves or put them down. I would just call those people 'internet bullies' or make up a new word for what I do!

This. This. This and this.
It fucking infuriates me when I read a headline like "Girl kills herself because of internet trolls" then when you actually read the article it's people who have been straight up internet bullying them.. That's not trolling, that's just being an absolute cunt to someone for no reason. But then again this IS the British media, the same folks who resulted in me having to pull a peado bear sticker off my car because they started making out it was how peados identified themselves.

It's come to mean "bullying" or "taking the piss" or just being plain offensive, rather than its more nuanced, original meanings. With the BBC, it's a bit like listening to your chronically lame teacher trying to be cool, and failing miserably. They could just say "bullies" and be much closer to the mark.

But this change of meaning is happening in internet communities too. I'm sure we can find reddit posts with downvoted comments mentioning niggers, sluts who deserved it, rape threats, outright insults, and so on, and people will call them trolls. It seems these days that there are many flavours of troll.

The key thing that the media and general public miss, in my opinion, is that trolls do it simply to get a reaction. If you legitimately think Beiber is a flaming cunt and message him on Twitter to tell him so, you're not a troll, you're just a bit of an ass. But it seems that the wider population believes that anyone saying anything not-nice is a troll.

I think there have always been different flavours of troll, and I think that 'people who are genuinely nasty and post nasty things because they're nasty' are definitely on the spectrum (or the plane if we're going to go down that road) but are definitely in a different class/group than bloodninja or any of the famous trolls.

Besides, people who would wear the 'troll' badge with pride will often do so because they think it's funny, and I don't know HOW many times I've had the debate over whether something is or isn't funny.

And you think those idiots who posted that shit on her page really wanted her to commit suicide ? Just think about that for a moment !

It IS trolling, but the point is kids of 13 should NOT be on the internet unsupervised, because they simply don't have the mental faculty to distinguish what is being said in jest (albeit some very sick jokes) and what is really meant !

Kids always called each other names in the playground ... and you were invariably told by your parents "he's a dick, just ignore it". But for some reason, the second it goes on the internet, kids are taking what is said WAY too seriously. If all it takes is some name-calling to get someone to commit suicide, then half my High School classmates would have been dead before 16.

I blame a generation (or two) of helicopter moms, teachers who can't discipline the kids in their care without fear of a lawsuit, and a general decline in the toughness of kids. Sticks and stones etc is STILL relevant to this day. Any kid who commits suicide had way bigger problems emotionally and mentally already, but that might call into question the quality of parenting involved, something we must NEVER do in our eagerness to find someone to blame.

There's still a difference between "God I hate this person so fucking much she should just fucking kill herself" and "hey this person's getting a lot of positive attention, let's stir the pot and tell them to kill themselves!"

The first is more than likely what's being spoken about here, when it's members of the general public who aren't as internet-savvy (is there any better term I can use that makes me sound less like I'm not internet savvy?!). People like vomiting out their anger that way. The second is arguably worse than the first, but it's doing it for a reaction and not through actual hatred.

Are we talking about someone specific here, by the way? Because currently I'm not sure. If we're just talking about general internet bullying, the reason that the subject has taken off as it has is because it's all right there to be seen. Before the internet we would only hear about bullying when some poor child had enough and killed themselves because the rest of the time there just was not proof, and certainly not actual examples of the cruel shit people say.

Anyway, internet bullying when done by members of your class at school is not trolling, in my opinion, so doesn't count. I was talking more about people who target famous people, politicians, activists and the like.

Mainstream media have leapt on the term 'troll' because generally speaking the journalists and editors are still a generation apart from the 'internet savvy' generation. They don't understand internet culture and will use and abuse to breaking point any word that seems to compartmentalise or make sense of what they are being asked to report on. Also, it sounds sensational.

Personally I think trolling forums (beyond personal jokes within small groups) is a twatty thing to do anyway and not particularly clever; but the media have been very irresponsible in blurring the distinction between this and outright bullying; which doesn't need a new name.

The internet has become far more accessible and communication is no longer restricted to forums or instant messaging anymore, thanks to Facebook, Twitter and online gaming becoming more popular. As a result, the media is picking up on what has been known about for years.

Any news report that's technology based is painful to listen to, especially when it is covered by the BBC. Their idea of tech coverage is the awful programme 'Click' which explains 5 year old technology like it's news.

"Hey, guys, have you heard about this new webzone called ForChan? It's super scary and full of l33t trolls and hackers, don't go there. Go to MySpace instead, that's where all the cool kids are nowadays."

Not to mention that this case sounds like just an extension of face-to-face bullying. I think it's a fair bet that the anonymous posters on her page were probably from her school. This whole matter is akin to blaming paper manufactures for providing the platform for a mean note being passed around.

direct communication must be fairly new. no celeb would post their email publicly. i guess some might have read their own fan (snail) mail, but most bigger celebs would have someone sorting it, discarding most of the nasty stuff.

also worth keeping in mind that anything you send over the internet is just words. no crazy fans can hurt you with razor blades or poison or anything. boo-hoo. maybe the BBC should do an announcement saying this and asking everyone to grow up.

you can't have the benefits of direct communication without also having the downsides. is this not obvious? you are free to not use twitter etc., or not use your public ID there..

Guess who decides the news agenda? Older people. Guess who arent up to speed with the latest technology and are afraid of being made obsolete by it?? Older people.
Who digests the vast majority of the media (and makes up the bulk of our population)? Older people.

Therefore - bash the internet as much as you can so play on their fears to get viewing figures.

What you should be more concerned about is the fact that they implicitly link twitter trolling with cybercrime in the same breath, once more fueling this batshit insane governments ideas on being able to control what people say online via an elite internet police force.

Trolling is a art and an science. It's not just about being an arsehole, it's about being the lord high king of arseholes wielding a scalpel of ingenious words and entertainingly malevolent intent.

To troll is not to be Kali, destroying all or Lucifer preening and evil, it is to be Sun Wu Kong, the Monkey trickster, or Loki, slyly sliding around the truth and creating poignant legends of the lessons taught to those who think themselves immune to trickery.

To troll is to hold up a mirror to those with too much pride or power.

They ran an article about women being abused on twitter, suffering bomb threats.

This is nothing new. People are threatened all the time on the Internet, if I had a quid for each time I was threatened or got into an argument, I'd be stinking rich. It annoys me when people with no understanding of the Internet try to explain how it works, or critiques it.

Word usage evolution is a bit of a Wild West on the internet. I agree it's technically misappropriation but I think the meaning you've taken issue with is here to stay, at least in the mainstream media.

The Twitter row about the "Abuse" of MP's is hilarious, they flip the hell out whenever some numpty says anything remotely harsh to them. Said numptys then realise that the self righteous twats will give them no end of attention and cause problems for people in the UK while they make threats from half a world away.

The lack of understanding how the Internet works by the Gov and Media is hilariously terrifying and I'm 100% sure if it continues on its current path we will have active censorship in the UK.

because if we are honest, she had issues other than internet bullying. Whether it was confidence, self image or whatever she had a weakness. Its a tragedy what happened to this girl, but its along the same lines as banning booze because people get liver disease.

Yeah. Most likely, ask.fm was just one of a number of factors that pushed them over the edge. In fact, them using ask.fm in the first place probably tells us something about them. People using that site and others may be desperate for attention, they want their existence validated. When you use it and instead get a cruel rejection, it would not help their image of how the world thinks of them.

I could. It would be funny but only really to me and eventually you thus ruining the point. The point being if I did keep doing it you would still use reddit. If I did it for long enough and properly one day you could be depressed and I could push you over the edge.

Then you will get someone posting on the tread of your death.

I couldn't help but wonder why quistodes didn't just stop going on reddit

That's a bit like "Don't go outside" as a means of avoiding 'real life' bullying - it's not that easy to simply not have an online presence, and even where it is I don't see why these people should need to forego it.

I don't think the solution is enforcement; I think it's for the web to stop being viewed as this weird make-believe area where nothing's real and for it to, largely, assume most of the properties of any other "real life" form of interaction.

I don't want it expunged completely - I'm very much in Linus' camp on that recent LKML argument - but I really don't think it's helpful to treat the Internet as some sort of make-believe place and, if we're to stop pretending it doesn't exist in real-life we're also going to end up with large bits of it that are 'in public' and so not the sort of places you noisily threaten passing strangers with rape, and those are going to include the publically-accessible social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

There's still going to be the other places where you can make those sorts of jokes - the 4chans and the like - but they'll be restricted largely to consenting individuals which, I accept, does probably rather take the fun out of it.

But, long term, I think pretending the Internet doesn't really exist does it far more harm than it does good.

I think the problem is coming from the intersection of two internet cultures. The one that existed from the early internet, with anonymity and treating the internet as a very different world from the real world, and the culture that's grown up since 2.0 - less anonymity, the internet as an extension of one's other life. I guess if you're from the former culture, then you don't want the internet to loose the silly hyper-real culture it always had.

I like to think I'm from the former, but I've always viewed it as a very real tool and just another place for a bunch of social interactions and whatnot - I think the potential for anonymity is a very important part of it, but I don't think it should be required.

Almost all of my online identities are linked to each other and it's probably trivial to get from those to my 'real' one and this has been the case since shortly after getting on the internet. I don't see why this would be peculiar, but it definitely is.

No this is not the same. You need to go to school, get a job etc, you don't need to use social media (where most of this bullying apparently happens). Comparing real bullying to people getting upset about mean people on the internet is insulting to those who suffered real bullying.

Comparing real bullying to people getting upset about mean people on the internet is insulting to those who suffered real bullying.

People who have suffered online bullying that they perceive to be real tend to disagree with you.

It's not quite akin to saying you need to get a new job or a new school to say "just don't use the Internet" but it is like saying "just don't go into town" or "just don't read letters sent to you" and, while neither of those prevent you from living a life, they do reduce substantially the amount you would enjoy living it.

You need to go to school, get a job etc, you don't need to use social media (where most of this bullying apparently happens).

I don't understand how you can be so short-sighted. Why should people be forced off sites they mostly enjoy using because of some abuse? And why do you think they won't simply move on to other sites?

That's akin to saying, "Oh, you get abuse shouted at you every time you leave your house in the evening? Well just stay inside after you get home from school/work, you don't need to leave your house in the evening."

With teenagers, it's easy to say "turn off the computer, then," but many of them can't. Social media is a way of interacting with friends, trying to be popular and accepted, and generally getting to grips with the world. I bet most of us did much the same, once, albeit by going to discos and wearing funny clothes. It's not a good response to imply it's the victim's fault. Maybe they should "grow up" but the whole point is - they're still just kids.

I think threatening that there is a bomb outside a house is terrible. I do like what Mary Beard did, a friend of the lad who abused her sent her a message asking if she wanted his mums address so she could tell her what her son was doing. She soon got an apology.

Total anonymity allows for more extreme expressions. This type of thing has always been common place online, the understood boundaries are much further away than they are in real life and as someone earlier in the thread said.. what we are seeing as a kind of clash between two cultures. Those that used the internet before it was 'mainstream' and have grown used to the effects of anonymity, grown used to putting up with people who have complete freedom to express themselves however they wish, and those who got on just for Facebook and Amazon.

The thing is, the internet hasn't fundamentally changed in that time. The technology isn't really any different, it's still as anonymous and lawless as it ever was it's just that things like Facebook have made it feel safe and encouraged people to spill their entire life onto it, making themselves easy targets in the process. Nor will it ever change, the whole core reason it works and has enveloped our lives is because it cannot be controlled by any single entity.

So my conclusion is that the mainstream should accept that image as harmless foolishness because it's born out of a place that places no restrictions on expression. This is how it is now and sure you might be able to catch a few of the low hanging fruit who stupidly don't protect their identity but anyone with half a brain can make it extremely difficult. Passing data without the capability to pass judgement is what computers were built to do and it's only now that my mum has started using the internet has this seemingly became impossible to understand and should be stopped when the data being passed isn't pleasant.

It takes a lot less effort to be much more offensive over the internet and if you don't keep that in mind you end up treating images like that in the same way you would had they been physically posted through her letterbox, which isn't the same thing at all.

It's 'cause the media's still largely staffed with people who don't really understand or spend any real investment of time interacting with the internet.

..But will still appropriate half understood language and concepts to appear to be culturally relevant. From any culture, not just internet. People pretend to be gangsters, pretend to be artists, pretend to be businessmen.

It's just especially annoying because popular media's spent the last ten years pretending to be hip to computer culture and the thirty years beforehand mocking it. I think I preferred being unfashionable.

It's simply eliciting a reaction from someone to show that they are taking internet messages more seriously than they should be. It's funny to watch people get all worked up just because 'the internet' disagrees with them.

It can be lying, cheating, pranking, griefing, whatever. It doesn't matter how you do it, what makes it trolling is that people are effected by it.

The internet is a fake world full of anonymous idiots saying meaningless things nobody can control and trolling is its way of testing your waters. If you let it annoy you it's both funny and proof you need to sort your priorities out.

The definition of trolling you are using is a misappropriation of the word by regular people who know how to make a prank that isn't mean-spirited. The original definition basically was internet bullying. That definition is still valid in places. The BBC is just years behind.

BTW, trolling has become kind of a redundant term, because nowadays it does basically mean pranking or tricking.

A troll can be literally anyone, grab someone who's in a bad mood and put them on the internet on a social media site where there's either someone saying something they disagree with or just someone they don't like and BINGO, you have yourself a 'troll'!

"What's that?", I hear everyone saying! "The British media are sensationalising everything yet again!", so that you tune into their channel, buy their papers, or read their web articles.

The British media is a shameful sham of what it used to be. Especially the BBC, who held high standard in the past, but no more. Thanks a lot Rupert Murdoch for setting the British media media standards to the lowest possible common denominator and dumbing down our news coverages.

Yes, I remember the days when The Sun was such a high-brow organ of factology, with Page 3 models wearing middle-class, burlesque nipple tassels. Then the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil Rupert Murdoch came along and forced it to go rooting through the bins of back street gossip.

In the spirit of my visit to this country I checked out this subreddit, and I am SO GLAD this topic exists. I thought I was going crazy every time I saw today's paper.

It feels like a thirty year old working at whichever newspaper was sent on a workshop to learn internet culture to "connect to another audience" and the result was this bastardization of an originally very useful and specific term.

Also, off topic but I would just like to congratulate this country on it's tea. Well done.

The BBC is correct in this instance. I may be only 15 years old but I know that trolling can cause serious psychological damage to kids like me. The sooner we can stop online trolling, the better the internet will be

Perhaps for you a troll is merely a prankster, but I am seeing it far more commonly used as a term for a general asshole. The modern troll seeks to offend, to hurt. Honestly, I'm with this use of the word.